


Orchids ~ Red ~ Leaves

by The_Exile



Category: Royal Blood | Gemfire, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Dragons, Gen, Possession, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, pre-Gemfire, references but does not take place in the genocide route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 12:31:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11036244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: The Human Souls barely survive their part in the ritual. They make temporary vessels out of crystal and escape to the surface on their own, dragging Chara with them. They believe Chara to be fairly stable by now but they're all tired and hurt, a part of them still wanting to lash out. The last thing they need is to accidentally surface on the wrong continent and be mistakenly worshipped as deities.An AU where pretty much every event in Gemfire was caused by the Human Souls. Inspired by the colours of the gems in Gemfire.





	Orchids ~ Red ~ Leaves

There was enough left of them afterwards, just. Everyone had left, walked outside into a world where they couldn't follow, so there was no reason for them to stay. They didn't resent their abandonment by the refugees who were seeing their old home for the first time in so long, as it was logical of them to assume the sacrifices dead. And as their essence seeped through the rock, denied purchase in the world of light and life, now more part of the mountain than anything else, the first thing they met that could hold their forms were crystals. Their essence coalesced into the gem veins, their flames reflecting in every crack and facet, casting patterns of light that twisted in on themselves in webs of power. Gathering their remaining magic, taking care not to burn the mental strength they were using to keep themselves in existence, they began moulding their new vessels. Psychic energy became heat and pressure, slowly smoothing down the crystal into perfect orbs that rippled with dancing lights. 

Slowly, over lengths of time imperceptible to those who had not lost their sense of time along with their bodies and their perceptions of the outside world a long time ago, left with their sanity in a form that could no longer be considered human only because they were the strongest of souls, they pushed their new vessels up to the surface. The mountain was their womb and they were being reborn in what would become a violent spasm of fire and heat and light.

A few humans, early settlers, came to see why the volcano had erupted so far outside its usual cycle. Assuming divine wrath of some kind, their procession was steeped in ceremony, and as they discovered the strangely regular, brilliant, glittering gems, they began to worship them. 

The souls understood that they had interrupted the natural way of things on the island, possibly changed history forever. They also instantly realised that they hadn't emerged in the same place that they first descended. They sensed the sea all around them, an enormous surging wave of pure blue spiritual energy. This was only a small island, far from their home. They weren't meant to be here at all, and they might have ruined things for the locals forever.

They vowed to put it right. Reaching out for the minds of those who bore them on a palanquin, bowing to them and chanting, they gently nudged them, giving them the divine inspiration they sought in the gentlest way they possibly could. 

They didn't stop fervently worshipping the strange gems, despite the prompts, which were just seen as further proof of divinity, or possibly a test of faith. However, the attempts at human sacrifices or wars over the exact interpretation of the miracle soon stopped. The souls reached out to beasts and monsters, encouraging them to peacefully meet. Elves, water and wind spirits, salamanders and wyverns and dragons, they all met together with the humans to arrange treaties and boundaries. There would be no repeat of the events on Mt. Ebbot. Of course, there was still division between the followers of particular soul-gems, but all attempts to turn these differences into full-blown holy wars were repeatedly quelled by the gems, who instead encouraged them to spread across the island and try out their ideas in their own regions, trading and comparing progress and competing in healthier ways. If they had accidentally become the Gods of an entire civilisation, they would at least be responsible deities and make it a haven for all beings.

Some humans eventually managed to mate with the elves, beginning the Divas line. Known for their extremely long lifespans, natural grace and wisdom, being closer to the land but in a neutral way - they refused to affiliate with a particular soul-gem - the Divas family were seen as natural leaders to the point of being avatars of the Gods. Lorelei Divas soon became the first Queen of all Ishmeria, the name decided for the island. As the half-elves of Divas were considered to embody the virtues of all the Gods, the soul-Gems were collected together for the first time in history since their discovery, then forged into a magnificently wrought crown, named 'Gemfire' for the flames that seemed to swirl inside the jewels even when no light was shining on them. 

The Souls were a little worried about this development, as it was based upon a lie that was bound to cause trouble in the future - this Lorelei Divas was a powerful mage but was by no means as powerful as or related to the eight of them - and they had really wanted to be able to see the entire island at once and report back to each other. On the other hand, communicating over a long distance had been a strain on their psychic reserves and they had been a little lonely. They could help each other more easily this way, during what would be trying times. 

They should never have tried to stay apart when they were still recovering from their ordeal, being used as power sources for an unimaginably dangerous ritual. They hadn't been given enough chance to rest, thrust straight into their new roles as they were. The cracks were beginning to form. Still, they had a responsibility they couldn't back out of now.

More time passed. Civilisation grew. Magic became a formal study and the rulers became, not those individuals who were strongest or had the most magic power or the purest Elven lineage, but the ones who could more efficiently manage the colleges and the battle-mage academies and the bureaucrats whose everyday magic kept the clocks synchronised and prevented anyone from tampering with the currency. Greater feats of magic became possible and the people of Ishmeria became more confident that they could personally become closer in nature to the soul-gems by achieving greater understanding of their nature. Several attempts were made to dissect the Gems, both physically and spiritually. Mostly these were averted when the Crown teleported itself out of the room but the anti-magic fields in the treasury were getting stronger and they were unintentionally hurting Purple and then Green, who had always been the weakest-willed of them and who had never quite recovered from being absorbed by the Abomination's living nightmare, instinctively lashed out and set the court mage on fire. The more invasive experiments stopped after that, and after further spontaneous accidents were linked to the anti-magic field being up, that was taken down as well. The scholars were allowed to learn personally from the Gems only if they came in small groups, if they could prove that they were using their magic for good, they made no attempts to tamper with the gems and they were powerful enough mages to handle the spells without burning themselves out. 

These experts came to be known as Gem Wizards. Over time, it became ritually significant to have one for each Gem at all times. Fear and needless superstition had returned to their attitude towards the Gems since the incident where the treasury almost burned down. They believed themselves - quite accurately - to have angered their Gods, the same Gods who had caused their local volcano to erupt. Before the Souls realised what was happening, the fear had inevitably turned into attempts to pin the blame on each other mostly the various noble families accusing each other of having hired the specific mage who made the mistake that angered the Gods. Once again, the Souls intervened to try and prevent civil war but they were still shaken from the pain they were put through and the effort it took them to calm down Green. What was worse, the greater scale of the dispute, the financial and political stakes in play and the power of the magic being flung around made the situation harder to control. 

Then Red went berserk. 

Unlike the others, Red didn't really have their own theme when it came to magic. For instance, Green was best at pyromancy and obsessed with cooking when she was in a good mood and throwing fireballs at whoever annoyed her when she wasn't. Purple was best at blessings and curses, which she always cast by literally throwing words from her extensive vocabulary at her target. Red was just good at learning from others and somehow coming back from things they could have sworn killed them. They mostly just outlasted things, then tried again and again to get revenge with whatever opportunity presented itself. This made them the least predictable and the most dangerous.

This time around, Red managed to possess a dragon. Specifically, an ancient red dragon, its scales the same bloody hue as the soul's aura, roughly the size of the palace in Londre where Gemfire was housed, nigh-immortal and capable of tearing down the city walls and roasting the entire Lankshire army alive in the time it took for a human to blink. The other souls knew it was capable of this because it immediately flew from the volcanic cave it was sleeping inside of, lulled to a pleasant torpor by the unseasonal lava, descended upon Londre, its bulk large enough to plunge the palace into darkness, then tore the place apart. 

The instincts of the other souls were immediate. As they usually did when there was trouble these days, they possessed their respective Gem Wizards and went into battle themselves, in a desperate attempt to subdue Red and drag them back inside until their legendary temper had died down again. The battlefield was quite a sight, of which the bards would tell epic tales for centuries to come: Pluvius, Zendor, Empyron, Skulryk, Scylla and Chylla, standing in the smoking ruins of Londre palace, hurling storms of fire, ice, lightning and poison, even bringing meteors down from the heavens in an attempt to stop the dragon from its rampage across Ishmeria. The wizards' aura shone so brightly with the powers of the Gems that they were visible in the mundane light spectrum, a sphere of radiance that kept the dragon's fire at bay. Finally, between them, they managed to exhaust the power of the dragon, before sealing it deep within the volcanic mountains. It is unknown what exactly transpired in those underground rituals but the wizards themselves were not seen again after that point, except for carefully arranged audiences that it was taboo to speak of afterwards. Rumour had it that the wizards no longer existed on the mortal plane, but had sealed themselves directly in the Gems. This had not actually happened, the Souls had simply withdrawn and taken the wizards with them to supervise the dragon until it calmed down. They had learned their lesson about directly intervening too much in mortal affairs. Even though they had never really been Gods, they couldn't afford to behave like mortals, no matter how much they pined for normal human interaction again. Besides, they had pretty much forgotten how it worked, so they probably wouldn't appreciate it even if they had it.

No, it was time to withdraw and take with them every possible method of interacting with them. It was a shame they couldn't take the Crown as well but its disappearance would completely destabilise society, it was such an important symbol to them. They simply refused to answer any means of contacting it, allowing Green to burn the few people who tried any more forcefully to get an answer out of them. They had to rest up for the inevitable larger disaster. Inspired by Red's insanity - they still wouldn't calm down, but sat inside their dragon refusing to negotiate with the others and telling them over and over again that it had been a mistake to ever trust humans and they should just have wiped the island clean and started afresh with a sensible species such as lizards - the ruling family, still the Lankshires despite several violent attempts by the other families to depose them, were getting more and more mentally deranged and less capable of rule themselves. The youngest Princess in particular was acting strangely. Acting upon her orders, the royal scientists - what was it with royal scientists? - had developed a knife that could pry the Gems from the crown, if not actually cut them. The magical experiments had set the entire ecosystem out of balance, causing extremes of weather and the resurfacing of diseases thought eradicated, and the more magical of the beasts were starting to be affected. 

In short, everything was a mess. Again.

Green was beginning to agree with Red. Purple was having second thoughts too. It was all the others could do to keep their friendship from falling apart along with their Kingdom. 

There were still good people, Blue told them. He always seemed to end up as the leader these days. Orange was too tired to do it any more. There were people as strong as us, with the same wishes for peace. Some of them had already defected from Lankshire. There were benevolent spirits, too, the Unicorns and Pixies and Gwraigs. That thing in the water had come back again, the thing with the huge aura they had mistaken for the sea itself. It soothed them to speak to the huge aquatic presence. It wanted peace for them. It was Ishmeria's guardian spirit, the entity they really should all be worshipping. 

It needed their help, needed them to stop acting the exact way the Abomination would have wanted them to. Whoever it meant siding with. Anyone at all, as long as they were powerful enough to retake the Crown from the insane hands it had fallen into. 

It was difficult to contact anyone when their physical forms were stuck in enemy territory, their situation the same as it had been under the mountain except it was no longer their choice, but the Pastha told them that it was a problem soon to be solved for them. They hadn't known what the sea dragon was talking about until it became obvious.

They hated being apart but at least they were free again. More importantly, they no longer had to deal with Red disrupting their thoughts all the time. On the other hand, it meant that they were free to rampage again. Everything on this island was divided, its very nature in conflict, the spirit of Ishmeria outraged at all that had been done to it. War was inevitable, no matter how much they abhorred it, because, as the Goat Prince had warned them, there were plenty more Abominations in the world and not everything could be solved by being nice to people...


End file.
